


i guarantee you we'll make it out alive

by NotMyOrthonym



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn, this ship will be the death of me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-20 17:55:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1519868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotMyOrthonym/pseuds/NotMyOrthonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No more distractions, not for Clarke. She needs to focus on what to do about the Ark, about the hundred, and about what kind of world they're trying to build here. To do that, she has to work with Bellamy.</p>
<p>Which works out about as well as you imagine. And a whole lot better than that too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i'm sinking inside

**Author's Note:**

> There is a criminally small amount of fic for this pairing/fandom, so I'm doing a kind of plotty kind of shippy chapter fic. Yay!

The storm is slowly winding down outside as Clarke watches. She’s waiting for the rain and what must be thunder to stop so that she can go and get more seaweed. Their supply will last for now, but Finn will need more before three days are out, and the grounders are less likely to be out and about right after a storm. But she can’t go out until the rain stops at the very least, so she’s waiting for that. She is literally sitting on the drop ship floor, rigid and utterly still, staring out and waiting for the rain to stop. Something at the back of her head tells her that she should probably rest, that after spending 4 hours trying to save Finn’s life, rest would be a good idea. But if she rests, she might miss when the storm lets up, and she needs this seaweed. All she has to do is wait till the rain stops, then it’s a half hour walk to the stream, she’ll have to keep her eyes peeled – 

“Hey, Princess.” She starts at Bellamy’s voice, hand flying to the knife at her waist. He glances at her hand, and it takes her a minute to tell her body that he is not a threat, that she can let go of her weapon. She shakes her head to clear it. More tired than she realized, apparently. “How’s Spacewalker?”

“We’ll need to watch him carefully for a while, but he’s stable for now,” she says, eyes turning back to the rain. 

Bellamy shifts awkwardly at her side. “And, uh, the Ark?” She can feel the tension radiating off him. 

“We lost contact. The system we had rigged fried when the lightning hit.” Her voice is a little hoarse. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed her mother until she’d heard her. The radio had cut out just after she’d managed to get Finn in stable condition, but there’d been enough time for an “I’m proud of you, Clarke” in there. She still wasn’t sure where she stood with her mother, with what she knew now, but those words had almost made her cry. 

“So – “

“So we don’t know if they’re coming or not, no,” she sighs. She supposes she can’t really blame him for wanting to know. While he didn’t actually kill the Chancellor, he still has to answer for shooting him when the people on the Ark come down. Not to mention if they find out about his throwing away the radio. That’s 300 deaths on _his_ head. And the Ark … They’ll want retribution for that. They’ll want Bellamy’s death. 

“Right.” He starts to retreat back into the ship. “Keep me updated on Spacewalker.” She doesn’t say anything back, just nods. He’s gone soon enough. 

She wonders if she wants him dead. He _is_ responsible for those deaths, he’s the reason 300 people were floated. And he knew, he _knew_ that the Ark was dying, that without that radio they’d all die up there. And he’d chosen his life over theirs. There was no disputing that. 

But – 

But he’d helped, in the end. After realizing that he didn’t have a body count yet. Still self-interested, still self-driven, but … but _different_ , somehow? 

It’s different here, on Earth. On the Ark, killing someone, not matter what the motive, even in self-defense, got you floated. But here … here life meant more. Here _intent_ mattered more. 

Would the people from the Ark understand that? She’s not even sure the hundred understand that, not after what they did to Murphy. 

It’s too much to think about right now. It’s too much to plan out while she really should just be sleeping. Her mind isn’t up to it. It’ll plague her for weeks to come, she knows that, but right now she pushes it to the back of her mind. Right now all she has to worry about is the rain letting up. Just a half-hour to the stream, then back …

 

It is at least five hours until the rain lets up, and the minute it does Clarke is out of the camp and into the forest faster than anyone can spot her. She breathes in deeply and sets off on her trek, careful of her step in the mud. It’s mechanical, one foot in front of the other, nothing on her mind other than where to put the next foot down and the smell of the forest after the rain. It’s something she’d read about in books, not something she’d ever thought she’d get to smell herself. She can’t describe it as anything other than earthy and she lets it relax her a little bit. It’s nice to have a simple mission for now, with an endpoint and a clear path. 

She makes good time, and is faster than ever getting to the seaweed. It’s probably because this time she knows the way, but the single-minded determination doesn’t hurt either. The river bank has swollen because of the rain, and she has to go in deeper than usual to get the plant, but she’s in and out fast enough. It occurs to her that if whatever bit Octavia showed up now, she’d have no help getting back to camp. But it doesn’t show up, and she’s on her way back quickly enough. Maybe it didn’t like storms either. 

One foot in front of the other, as the forest slowly lightens around her. The sun had only just risen when she’d set out after the storm. Maybe she’d get back to camp before anyone missed her at all. 

She wants to be there when Finn wakes up. Raven had been the one to sit with him after the surgery. Clarke didn’t want to separate them, wanted to do anything to make up for her mistake. She’d taught Raven how to take his vitals, given her a pencil and a piece of paper to write it down on for her. Clarke wanted to be the one there when he woke up, wanted to be the one who made sure he was okay. But she trusted Raven to do it, and she knew that Raven needed that more than her right now. 

She missteps and almost loses a shoe to some mud before deciding that now was still not the time to be thinking about these things. Thinking could come later when her head was clearer and better attached to her body. Thinking would come later, would probably keep her up many nights to come. But now, now was the time for mindless motion. Now was the time to get back to camp. 

 

It is still very early when she stumbles back into camp. Now that her mission is accomplished, the lack of sleep, the stress, and the exercise strain hits her all at once. She catches herself on the edge of the wall, when Octavia comes running up to her. 

“Where the hell have you been?” Clarke blinks tiredly at her. It takes a minute to process her words.

“I went to get some more seaweed.” Her voice sounds farther off than it should. She shakes her head in an attempt to clear it. It doesn’t really work. 

“Finn woke up,” Octavia rushes out, and the urgency is back all of a sudden. Clarke smacks the side of her head to get her eyes to focus properly, ignores the look that Octavia gives her, and sets off towards the drop-ship as fast as she can on ridiculously stiff legs. 

Clarke clambers up into the drop-ship, practically running to the makeshift med bay. There, on the table they’d prepped last night, is Finn, awake and smiling and alive. He and Raven are wrapped around one another, and neither of them notices Clarke just yet.

“Uh,” Clarke says, awkwardly. Finn startles, and tries to pull away from Raven, who doesn’t let him. 

“What’s up, doc?” Raven asks, eyes narrowed at Clarke. 

“Do you have his vitals?” Clarke asks, trying her very best to be all business. She’s far too tired to navigate delicate social interactions, and she doesn’t want to risk making Raven any angrier at her. It’s been a stressful couple of days for everyone, and Clarke really just wants to make sure they all survive it. She understands why Raven is upset, after all, Raven has every right to be upset. It’s just a little … inconvenient. 

“Right here,” Raven says as she holds up a piece of paper. Clarke walks briskly over and takes it, reading over the numbers messily scribbled down.

“These look pretty good,” Clarke says. “For now, I’d say the best thing to do is rest. Jasper will make you some tea, he’s the best at it, and after that just rest, with someone there to watch you. Raven, I assume – “

“Yeah, I’ll look after him.” She lifts her hand to brush some of his hair back from his face. Finn doesn’t look away from Clarke. Clarke is just too tired for all of this. 

“If there’s any change, come get me.” Raven nods, and Clarke gets out of there as fast as she can. 

She’d prefer to be the person there, of course. Not even for romantic reasons, she checked up on Jasper all the time too. It’s just – she’d been the doctor, the surgeon here, and if anything was wrong, if anything had gone wrong … well, it was her fault, wasn’t it? 

She thinks about walking all over camp to find Jasper and just the thought of it makes her want to groan. All she wants to do is lie down and sleep, just rest, now that she’s finally ready to. But she grits her teeth and walks over towards Jasper’s tent. With any luck, that’s where he’ll be. 

“Clarke!” Monty comes running up to her. “Hey, how’s Finn doing? Why aren’t you with him?”

“He’s stable, for now,” Clarke wonders how many more times she’ll have to say that today. “Raven’s looking after him. The biggest concern right now is infection.” An idea occurs to her. “Actually, could you find Jasper and ask him to bring Finn some tea? As quickly as possible, please.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Monty says, happy to have something he can do. He doesn’t like just having to sit back and watch as his friends maybe die, it’s a thing that’s happened too much lately. “You should go grab some sleep Clarke, you look dead on your feet.” 

“Thanks,” she says, shooting him a smile as he runs off to find his friend. She stumbles her way back to her tent, desperate for some rest finally. 

“Clarke!” She is two feet from her tent and she feels like crying as she is once again stopped from just getting some damn sleep. It has been a very stressful day. “I told you to keep me updated on Finn, _Princess_.” It’s a bigger sneer than ever, and she can feel her temper rising quickly. “Why did I only just find out he’s awake?” 

She spins around on her heel to stare Bellamy down. He looks like he hasn’t slept either, but she feels no sympathy. She’s tired, he’s a jerk, and she feels no shame taking her frustration from all the shit she’s had to deal with lately out on him. “First of all, I don’t follow your _orders_ , Bellamy. I don’t _report_ to you, either. Secondly, you don’t get to suddenly start _caring_ about Finn just because he’s been injured! Now I have been up. all. night. rushing around trying to make sure Finn doesn’t die, and I am _tired_. We can have this argument later, and I’m sure we will, but for now, I am getting some damn sleep so my mind is working well enough to actually _keep_ Finn alive!” And with that she turns back around, scrambles into her tent as fast as possible, and begins to zip up the opening.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Princess!? I’m not done talking here!”

“You’re never done talking, Bellamy! And I’m going to sleep!” She manages to get her tent closed. It’s nothing even close to soundproof, but wrapping her jacket around her head she can almost block out Bellamy’s cursing from outside her tent. It’s a testament to how tired she is that she falls asleep despite it. 

One thing’s for sure. These next couple of weeks are not going to be easy. Not for anyone.


	2. and the masts and lines are broken down tonight

She dreams of the Ark. She’s floating in space, watching it. She’s seen the schematics, the 3D renderings as well, so she basically knows what it looks like. Mostly. What she doesn’t, she can imagine. Has imagined. She watches 300 bodies being ejected en masse into space, to join the who knows how many others already out there. To join her father. There’s no air in space, so there’s no decay. They’re out there, forever, dead and unchanging. There are some windows on the Ark where you can just catch a glimpse of them. The unnumbered dead. Everyone who had ever died, or been floated. She used to find it comforting, knowing that her ancestors were still out there, right out there, preserved forever. It became creepy when it was her father out there, forever, always watching, never changing, frozen at his moment of death. She’d had nightmares about his face frozen in that final expression of fear and pain for months after he was floated. Now it will be a testament to 300 worthless deaths. She wakes several times, only to fall asleep and watch it all over again. 

Eventually she gives up on getting any real rest, and walks into camp feeling like she hasn’t slept at all.

It is early afternoon, and most people are working on rebuilding the portions of wall that the storm had collapsed. Others are trying to salvage several trashed tents, Monty, Jasper, and Octavia among them. Jasper and Octavia were working together, heads close, while Monty wrestled with a tent on his own. 

“You okay there, Monty?” Clarke asks as she walks towards him. He looked about ready to give up. 

“I’m no good at this. Wire and metal are my materials, not fabric. I’m terrible with fabric.” He pulls a face and gestures at the mangled mess of torn tent in front of him to illustrate his point. 

“Why aren’t you fiddling with things in the drop ship like usual?” Clarke actually doesn’t really know what Monty does in there, just that he was trying to figure out a way to contact the Ark often. But he was also doing something with the solar panels on the drop ship, maybe trying to find a way to generate some amount of electricity for them to use, so she figured he’s be focusing on that now that they had managed to make contact with the Ark. 

“Raven kicked me out. I’m more of a software guy than a hardware guy, really. She’s the expert here, and she didn’t want me messing things up.” He looks kind of embarrassed to admit this, his failure with the wristbands still fresh in his memory. 

“You do your best, Monty. She’s had more training than you.” 

“Yeah, well, means I’m more useful out here, anyway. I mean, not really very useful at all out here, because apparently a needle and thread is too complicated for me, but still. You know what I mean. ” He goes back to trying to fix up the tent. She turns to go, when something occurs to her. 

“Monty, if you’re not busy with the ship anymore, could you have a look at the surrounding vegetation?” 

“Uh, sure, I guess. Anything in particular you want me to look out for?”

“We’ve had a couple of rashes these past couple days. Mostly on hands, mostly on wall-builders. It’s been slowing us down somewhat. I think we’ve got something poisonous nearby, and we need to learn what to look for. Here,” she pulls a small notepad and pencil from the art supply store out of her jacket pocket. “Put some descriptions of what you find, maybe some drawings too, if you can?” 

“Yeah, no problem.” Monty beams at her as he drops the tent and clutches the notebook instead. It’ll be good for him, doing something he’s good at. Raven arriving makes his tech skills less important, which clearly has made him a little unhappy. Monty needs to feel useful, he needs to feel like he can do something well, and his real expertise has always been plants anyway. Really, they should have had him doing this far sooner. 

“I better get going, got to check up on Finn and then do the rounds.” Clarke gives him a last nod and turns to head into the drop ship. 

She walks through to the room that has become their designated med bay for the time being. She can hear someone banging around in the upper levels, so it’s probably just Finn in there at the moment. She steels herself for a moment before walking in. 

Sure enough, Raven is nowhere to be seen. Finn is propped up against the wall, fiddling with some wire, possibly making another one of his (infamous) sculptures. He glances up and meets her eyes when she enters. 

“Hey Clarke,” he says, quietly, eyes wide and pleading. 

She smiles a little. “Hey Finn,” she replies, matching his volume. Everything’s so messed up right now, between them and within her, and there’s a part of her that is desperate to lean on him, to ask him for answers. But she can’t. She knows that. What they had, what they were building … It wasn’t too far gone to stop, but it had to be actively stopped. At least for now. For now she couldn’t let him be her support structure. Not until whatever this what had faded. Not until he and Raven were rock solid again. So she clears her throat and shakes her head a little, and slips into business mode. “How are you feeling?”

“Clarke – “ 

“You lost a fair amount of blood, are you feeling shaky at all? Too tired? Does your head hurt?” She’s pointedly not meeting his eyes, running her gaze over the rest of his body instead, looking for anything she’s missed, anything that might be giving him extra trouble. 

He swallows and clenches his fists. “I’m feeling great, considering I had a knife in my stomach not too long ago.” He smiles up at her, his most charming grin. “You did a great job back there, Clarke.”

_How would you know, you were passed out for most of it?_ , she wants to ask. She wants to join him in the banter. “Really, Finn, how are you feeling?” she asks instead, trying to keep the tone serious. They need to be a little more serious now.

She hates watching his face fall. She hates that she’s losing the one real friend she’s made on the ground because things had to get romantic and Finn had to have a girlfriend and everything had to go to shit. 

She expects him to fight her more, to try and get her to joke with him, to try to get back to the dynamic they had before. But maybe he’s more tired than she realized, because instead he just says, “Little shaky, pretty sore. I can’t walk very far, I tried earlier.”

“You shouldn’t be walking yet, you could reopen your stiches,” she admonishes. “Which I need to check.” She waits until she gets a nod of permission from him before crouching down and lifting up his shirt a bit. Technically she should have him laying down flat for this, but that would probably require helping him back to the operating table, and minimal physical contact is infinitely preferable right now. She carefully peels back the bandage. The stitches look fine, nothing looks infected, there’s no redness or pus that shouldn’t be there. All in all it looks good. Very good. Surprisingly good considering the amount her hands had been shaking while she stitched him up. 

She doesn’t remember much of operating on him. She remembers the crackle of the radio and how hard she had to concentrate to make out her mother’s voice. She remembers how the knife had been deep in him. She remembers having to cut him open to see how deep. But the particulars, the moment to moment, it’s all lost in a haze of fear and sickness and worry. She doesn’t even really remember stitching him up. 

“Clarke?” His voice is soft and worried and she realizes she must have zoned out, staring at his stitches. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, sorry, sorry,” she gets to her feet and goes to grab a clean piece of cloth and some of Monty’s moonshine. She rinses her hands in it, then soaks the cloth. “Just need to clean it and change the bandage to make sure it stays clean. This might sting a little.” He just nods. She carefully and quickly cleans around the wound with the alcohol soaked cloth. Finn is as still as he can be through the whole thing, though she can see his stomach muscles clenching and unclenching, and hear the occasional hissing intake of breath. She rebandages the wound for him before standing up to leave. 

Finn grabs her hand. “Clarke, can we talk?” It come out in a rush, and he sounds so afraid. He sound so sad and so regretful and she really believes that he never wanted this. He never planned on this. He never planned on _her_ , on _them_ , and he’s trying his best to deal with it too. He’s being an utter asshole about it in a load of ways, but he’s _trying_. “Please?”

“No,” she says as she wrenches her hand away from his. “Not now. Not for a while, Finn.” And she leaves, as quickly as she can. 

She’s only known Finn for ten days. Not even two weeks. It feels like so much longer. It feels like ages. It feels like she’s known him her whole life. But that’s Raven. Raven’s known him her whole life.

And that’s the whole crux of the issue, isn’t it? It’s been ten days of death and trauma and fear, ten days of intense experiences, and more intense feelings. And with more time, with time to calm down and breathe and get to know one another when they weren’t fighting for their lives, maybe something might have come of her and Finn. Or maybe they would have fallen apart. It feels like they’ve known each other forever because what they’ve been through together is so extreme, but in the end they don’t really know one another very well at all. Because if he knew her, Finn wouldn’t be asking Clarke to – to what? To help him cheat on Raven? To help him break up with Raven?

To choose, she realizes. Finn wants her to help him choose between her and Raven. He wants to know that if he breaks up with Raven, she’ll be there, waiting in the wings for him. 

And that’s not – that’s just not _her_. If Finn wants her, Finn has to choose her of his own free will, on his own terms. He has to choose her whether she’ll be there for him or not. Otherwise, it’s not fair to her, and it’s incredibly not fair to Raven. 

She takes a moment to duck behind the drop ship, close her eyes, and just sigh. This is not the time to be worrying about _boys_ , of all things. The hundred have a hard time ahead of them. The Ark knows they’re alive now, knows that Earth is survivable. That means they’ll be headed down here. That’s what she has to worry about, preparing for that. Making sure the hundred don’t decide to kill the people from the Ark. Making sure the Ark doesn’t decide that the hundred aren’t worth keeping around. 

If Finn wants her to help him choose, then she will. She’ll take herself out of the running. She doesn’t need the distraction anyway. 

More composed now, she decides it’s time to start on the rounds. 

 

It’s only halfway through that she remembers the brief altercation with Bellamy outside her tent last night. She supposes that she should probably keep him informed of Finn’s state, since he asked so _nicely_. 

Finn’s their best tracker, without him they wouldn’t find half as many animals. And if anyone else goes missing, Finn’s their best bet to find them. The camp as whole would be worse off if they lost Finn. So she grudgingly admits that Bellamy is the logical person to keep informed of Finn’s condition. She isn’t entirely sure how the hunts will work without him there to help. 

The only problem is that she isn’t entirely sure where he is. Luckily, she catches sight of Octavia and Jasper, putting up the tent they were fixing earlier. She should know where her brother is. 

“Octavia!” Clarke calls up, jogging up to them. “Do you know where Bellamy is?”

“No,” Octavia doesn’t even glance up, though her movements get angrier and jerkier. “Why should I know? I’m not _his_ keeper.” The amount of venom in her voice is a little scary.

“… Is something wrong?” Clarke asks, not really wanting to get involved in any sibling drama, but feeling obligated to ask. She like Octavia, and if something was wrong, she should at least try to figure out what, right?

“Everything is fine,” Octavia says coldly. Clarke glances over to Jasper who looks just as confused and a little frightened. 

“Right. Well, I guess I’ll just, uh, go look for him.” Clarke shoots Jasper a sympathetic look, before turning and hurrying away. She really doesn’t need any more interpersonal problems to deal with. She has enough of her own, thanks very much. 

 

She finds Bellamy out by the wall, helping rebuild it and organizing which section they should focus on. For all the bad things you could say about the guy, at least he’s a hands-on leader. 

She doesn’t need to call out to get his attention, his henchmen alert him to her presence them minute she gets within eyesight. He starts toward her, clearly angry with her, so she cuts him off before he can even start. “Finn is fine, the wound is not infected, and he’s starting to heal already. He’ll have to be careful over the next few days not to rip out his stitches, but he apparently didn’t lose as much blood as I initially thought. Give him a couple weeks to heal properly, and he’ll be good as new.” She must be more tired than she thought, because she swears Bellamy almost looks relieved. Like a weight’s off his shoulders. 

“Good.” He nods at her, dismissing her she realizes, as he turns back to keep working on the wall. She doesn’t know how she feels about that. It makes her feel a little too much like his subordinate. But she has to finish up rounds, and she doesn’t have time to argue with him about it right now. 

It occurs to her later that he didn’t bring up the screaming match at all. That he didn’t mock her for it, that he didn’t even seem particularly angry with her. In fact, that was possibly their most civil interaction, ever. Short, professional, curt, but it could have been worse. When she finishes wrapping up her last sprained ankle of the day (the slippery ground had not been kind to their group), as she heads back to her tent for some much needed rest, it even gives her a little bit of hope. If she and Bellamy can work together, if they manage to make it without biting each other’s heads off or killing one another, then maybe they can get the camp in some kind of shape before the people from the Ark get here. It’s just a maybe, but it’s a whole lot better than yesterday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long getting out, I had a play going up and got distracted. Should be faster now. Thanks for all the kudos and comments guys, really, it means a lot to me :)


End file.
